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441 

£4-5 



Bookjd, A5V^_ 



DUTY OF THE FREE STATES, 



OR, 

REMARKS SUGGESTED BY THE 

CASE OF THE CREOLE. 

By WILLIAM E. CHANNING. 



LONDON: 
JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET. 

1842. 



Library of Congress 

By transfer from 
State Department* 

WA Y 9 1925 



BT RICHARD XIHDERj OKEE5 ARBOVR COVKT, OU> B Alt E T- 



REMARKS, 



I respectfully ask your attention, fellow citizens of the 
Free States, to a subject of great and pressing importance. 
The case of the Creole, taken by itself, or separated from 
the principles which are complicated with it, however it might 
engage my feelings, would not have moved me to the present 
address. I am not writing to plead the cause of a hundred 
or more men, scattered through the West Indies, and claimed 
as slaves. In a world abounding with so much wrong and 
woe, we at this distance can spend but a few thoughts on 
these strangers. I rejoice that they are free ; I trust that 
they will remain so ; and with these feelings, I dismiss them 
from my thoughts. The case of the Creole involves great 
and vital principles, and as such I now invite to it your 
serious consideration. 

The case is thus stated in the letter of the American Secre- 
tary of State to the American Minister in London : — 

" It appears that the brig Creole, of Richmond, Virginia, Ensor master, 
bound to New Orleans, sailed from Hampton Roads with a cargo of mer- 
chandise, principally tobacco and slaves, about one hundred and thirty-five 
in number. That on the evening of the 7th of November some of the 
slaves rose upon the crew of the vessel, murdered a passenger named 
Hewell, who owned some of the negroes, wounded the captain dangerously, 
and the first mate and two of the crew severely. That the slaves soon ob- 
tained complete possession of the brig, which under their direction was 
taken into the port of Nassau, in the Island of New Providence, where 
she arrived on the morning of the 9th of the same month: that at the 
request of the American Consul in that place, the Governor ordered a guard 
on board, to prevent the escape of the mutineers, and with a view to an 
investigation of the circumstances of the case : that such investigation 
was accordingly made by two British magistrates, and that an examination 
also took place by the Consul : that on the report of the magistrates, nine- 

B 2 



4 



teen of the slaves were imprisoned by the local authorities, as having been 
concerned in the mutiny and murder ; and their surrender to the Consul to 
be sent to the United States for trial for these crimes, was refused, on the 
ground, that the Governor wished first to communicate with the Govern- 
ment in England on the subject : that through the interference of the 
colonial authorities, and even before the military guard was removed, the 
greater number of the slaves were liberated, and encouraged to go beyond 
the power of the master of the vessel, or the American Consul, by pro- 
ceedings which neither of them could control. This is the substance of 
the case, as stated in two protests, one made at Nassau, and one at New 
Orleans, and the Consul's letters, together with sundry depositions taken 
by him, copies of all which are herewith transmitted." 

This statement of the case of the Creole is derived chiefly 
from the testimony of the officers and crew of the vessel, and 
very naturally falls under suspicion of being coloured in part 
by prejudice and passion. We must hear the other side, and 
compare all the witnesses, before we can understand the 
whole case. The main facts, however, cannot be misunder- 
stood. The shipping of the slaves at Norfolk, the rising of a 
part of their number against the officers of the vessel, the 
success of the insurrection, the carrying of the vessel into 
the port of Nassau, and the recognition and treatment of the 
slaves as free by the British authorities of that place, — these 
material points of the case cannot be questioned. 

The letter of our government, stating these facts as grounds 
of complaint .against England, is written with much caution, 
and seems wanting in the tone of earnestness and confidence 
which naturally belongs to a good cause. It does not go to 
the heart of the case. It relies more on the comity of 
nations, than on principles of justice and natural law. Still, 
in one respect, it is decided. It protests against, and com- 
plains of, the British authorities, and " calls loudly for 
redress." It maintains, that " it was the plain and obvious 
duty" of the authorities at Nassau to give aid and succour 
to the officers of the Creole in reducing the slaves to subjec- 
tion, in resuming their voyage with their cargo of men as 
well as of tobacco, and in bringing the insurgents to trial in 
this country. It maintains, that the claims of the American 
masters to their slaves existed, and were in force in the 
British port, and that these claims ought to have been 
acknowledged and sustained by the British magistrate. The 



5 



plain inference is, that the government of the United States 
is bound to spread a shield over American slavery abroad as 
well as at home. Such is the letter. 

This document I propose to examine, and I shall do so 
chiefly for two reasons : First, because it maintains morally 
unsound and pernicious doctrines, and is fitted to deprave 
the public mind ; and secondly, because it tends to commit 
the free States to the defence and support of slavery. This 
last point is at this moment of peculiar importance. The 
free States are gradually and silently coming more and more 
into connection with slavery ; are unconsciously learning to 
regard it as a national interest; and are about to pledge 
their wealth and strength, their bones and muscles and lives, 
to its defence. Slavery is mingling more and more with the 
politics of the country; determining more and more the 
individuals who shall hold office, and the great measures on 
which the public weal depends. It is time for the free States 
to wake up to the subject ; to weigh it deliberately; to think 
of it, not casually, when some startling fact forces it up into 
notice, but with earnest, continued, solemn attention ; to 
inquire into their duties in regard to it ; to lay down their 
principles ; to mark out their course ; and to resolve on 
acquitting themselves righteously towards God, towards the 
South, and towards themselves. The North has never come 
to this great matter in earnest. We have trifled with it. 
We have left things to take their course. We have been too 
much absorbed in pecuniary interests, to watch the bearing 
of slavery on the government. Perhaps we have wanted the 
spirit, the manliness, to look the subject fully in the face. 
Accordingly, the slave-power has been allowed to stamp itself 
on the national policy, and to fortify itself with the national 
arm. For the pecuniary injury to our prosperity which may 
be traced to this source, I care little or nothing. There is a 
higher view of the case. There is a more vital question to 
be settled than that of interest — the question of duty ; and 
to this my remarks will be confined. 

The letter which is now to be examined, may be regarded 
either as the work of an individual, or as the work of the 
government. I shall regard it in the latter light alone. Its 
personal bearings are of no moment. No individual will 



6 



enter my thoughts in this discussion. I regard the letter as 
issuing from the cabinet, as an executive document, as laying 
down the principles to which the public policy is in danger 
of being conformed, as fitted to draw the whole country into 
support of an institution which the free States abhor. With 
the opinions of an individual I have nothing to do. Corrupt 
principles adopted by the government — these, and these 
alone, it will be my object to expose. 

There is a difficulty lying at the threshold of such a dis- 
cussion, which I should be glad to remove. A northern man 
writing on slavery is supposed to write as a northern man, to 
be swayed by state feelings and local biases ; and the distrust 
thus engendered is a bar to the conviction which he might 
otherwise produce. But the prejudices which grow out of 
the spot where we live are far from being necessary or 
universal. There are persons whose peculiarity, perhaps 
whose infirmity it is, to be exceedingly alive to evils in their 
neighbourhood, to defects in the state of society in which 
they live, whilst their imaginations are apt to cast rosy hues 
over distant scenes. There are persons who, by living in 
retirement, and holding intercourse with gifted minds in 
other regions, are even in danger of wanting a proper local 
attachment, and of being unjust to their own homes. There 
are also worthier causes, which counteract the bigotry of 
provincial feelings. A man, then, is not necessarily pre- 
sumptuous in thinking himself free from local biases. In 
truth, slavery never presents itself to me as belonging to one 
or another part of the country. It does not come to me in 
its foreign relations. I regard it simply and nakedly in 
itself, and, on this account, feel that I have a right to 
discuss it. 

May I be allowed one more preliminary remark. The 
subject of slavery is separated in my mind, not only from 
local considerations, but from all thought of the individuals 
by whom it is sustained. I speak against this institution 
freely, earnestly, some may think vehemently; but I have 
no thought of attaching the same reproach to all who uphold 
it ; and this I say, not to propitiate the slaveholder, who 
cannot easily forgive the irreconcileable enemy of his wrong- 
doing, but to meet the prepossessions of not a few among 



ourselves, who from esteem towards the slaveholder, repel 
what seems to them to involve an assault on his character. 
I do indeed use, and cannot but use, strong language against 
slavery. No greater wrong, no grosser insult on humanity, 
can well be conceived ; nor can it be softened by the cus- 
tomary plea of the slaveholder's kindness. The first and 
most essential exercise of love towards a human being, is to 
respect his Rights. It is idle to talk of kindness to a human 
being, whose rights we habitually trample under foot. " Be 
just before you are generous." A human being is not to be 
loved as a horse or a dog, but as a being having rights ; and 
his first grand right is that of free action ; the right to use 
and expand his powers; to improve and obey his higher 
faculties ; to seek his own and others' good ; to better his 
lot ; to make himself a home ; to enjoy inviolate the relations 
of husband and parent ; to live the life of a man. An insti- 
tution denying to a being this right, and virtually all rights ; 
which degrades him into a chattel, and puts him beneath the 
level of his race, is more shocking to a calm, enlightened 
philanthropy, than most of the atrocities which we shudder 
at in history; and this for a plain reason. These atrocities, 
such as the burning of heretics, and the immolation of the 
Indian woman on the funeral pile of her husband, have 
generally some foundation in ideas of duty and religion. 
The inquisitor murders to do God service ; and the Hindoo 
widow is often fortified against the flames by motives of 
inviolable constancy and generous self-sacrifice. The Indian 
in our wilderness, when he tortures his captives, thinks of 
making an offering, of making compensation, to his own 
tortured friends. But in slavery, man seizes his brother, 
subjects him to brute force, robs him of all his rights, for 
purely selfish ends — as selfishly as the robber fastens on his 
prey. No generous affections, no ideas of religion and self- 
sacrifice, throw a gleam of light over its horrors. As such, I 
must speak of slavery, when regarded in its own nature, and 
especially when regarded in its origin. But when I look on 
a community among whom this evil exists, but who did not 
originate it ; who grew up in the midst of it ; who connect 
it with parents and friends ; who see it intimately entwined 
with the whole system of domestic, social, industrial, and 



8 



political life; who are blinded by long habit to its evils and 
abuses ; and who are alarmed by the possible evils] of the 
mighty change involved in its abolition, — I shrink from 
passing on such a community the sentence which is due to 
the guilty institution. All history furnishes instances of vast 
wrongs inflicted, of cruel institutions upheld by nations or 
individuals, who in other relations manifest respect for duty. 
That slavery has a blighting moral influence where it exists, 
is indeed unquestionable ; but in that bad atmosphere, so 
much that is good and pure may and does grow up, as to 
forbid us to deny esteem and respect to a man, simply because 
he is a slaveholder. I offer these remarks because I wish 
that the subject may be approached without the association 
of it with individuals, parties, or local divisions, which blind 
the mind to the truth. 

I now return to the executive document with which I 
began. I am first to consider its doctrines, to show their 
moral unsoundness and inhumanity ; and then I shall con- 
sider the bearing of these doctrines on the free States in 
general, and the interest which the free States] have at this 
critical moment in the subject of slavery. Thus my work 
divides itself into two parts, the first of which is now offered 
to the public. 

In regard to the reasonings and doctrines of the document, 
it is a happy circumstance, that they come within the com- 
prehension of the mass of the people. The case of the 
Creole is a simple one, which requires no extensive legal 
study to be understood. A man who has had little con- 
nection with public affairs, is as able to decide on it as the 
bulk of politicians. The elements of the case are so few, 
and the principles on which its determination rests, are so 
obvious, that nothing but a sound moral judgment is neces- 
sary to the discussion. Nothing can darken it but legal 
subtlety. None can easily doubt it, but those who surrender 
conscience and reason to arbitrary rules. 

The question between the American and English govern- 
ments turns mainly on one point. The English government 
does not recognize within its bounds, any property in man. 
It maintains, that slavery rests wholly on local municipal 
legislation; that it is an institution not sustained and 



9 



enforced by the law of nature, and still more, that it is repug- 
nant to this law ; and that of course, no man who enters the 
territory or is placed under the jurisdiction of England, can 
be regarded as a slave, but must be treated as free. The law 
creating slavery, it is maintained, has, and can have, no force 
beyond the State which creates it. No other nation can be 
bound by it. "Whatever validity this ordinance, which deprives 
a man of all his rights, may have within the jurisdiction of 
the community in which it had its birth, it can have no 
validity any where else. This is the principle on which the 
English government founds itself. 

This principle is so plain, that it has been established and 
is acted upon, among ourselves, and in the neighbouring 
British provinces. When a slave is brought by his master 
into Massachusetts, he is pronounced free, on the ground that 
the law of slavery has no force beyond the State which ordains 
it, and that the right of every man to liberty is recognised 
as one of the fundamental laws of the commonwealth. A 
slave flying from his master to this commonwealth is indeed 
restored, but not on account of the validity of the legislation 
of the South on this point, but solely on the ground of a 
positive provision of the constitution of the United States ; 
and he is delivered, not as a slave but as a " person held to 
service by law in another State." We should not think for a 
moment of restoring a slave flying to us from Cuba or Turkey. 
We recognize no right of a foreign master on this soil. The 
moment he brings his slave here, his claim vanishes into air; 
and this takes place because we recognise freedom as the 
right of every human being. 

By the provision of the constitution, as we have said, the 
fugitive slave from the South is restored by us, or at least his 
master's claim is not annulled. But we have proof at our 
door, that this exception rests on positive, not natural law. 
Suppose the fugitive to pass through our territory undis- 
covered, and to reach the soil of Canada. The moment he 
touches it, he is free. The master finds there an equal in his 
slave. The British authority extends the same protection 
over both. Accordingly, a colony of fugitive slaves is growing 
up securely, beyond our border, in the enjoyment of all the 
rights of British subjects. And this good work has been 



10 



going on for years, without any complaint against England as 
violating national law, or without any claim for compensation. 
These are plain facts. We ourselves construe the law of 
nature and nations as England does. 

But the question is not to be settled on the narrow ground 
of precedent alone. Let us view it in the light of eternal 
universal truth. A grand principle is involved in the case, or 
rather lies at its very foundation, and to this I ask particular 
attention. This principle is, that a man, as a man, has 
rights, has claims on his race, which are in no degree touched 
or impaired on account of the manner in which he may be 
regarded or treated by a particular clan, tribe, or nation of 
his fellow creatures. A man, by his very nature, as an intel- 
ligent, moral creature of God, has claims to aid and kind 
regard from all other men. There is a grand law of hu- 
manity, more comprehensive than all others, and under which 
every man should find shelter. He has not only a right, but 
is bound to use freely and improve the powers which God has 
given him ; and other men, instead of obstructing, are bound 
to assist their development and exertion. These claims a 
man does not derive from the family or tribe in which he 
began his being. They are not the growth of a particular 
soil ; they are not ripened under a peculiar sky ; they are not 
written on a particular complexion j they belong to human 
nature. The ground on which one man asserts them, all men 
stand on, nor can they be denied to one without being denied 
to all. We have here a common interest. We must all 
stand or fall together. We all have claims on our race, claims 
of kindness and justice, claims grounded on our relation to 
our common Father, and on the inheritance of a common 
nature. 

Because a number of men invade the rights of a fellow- 
creature, and pronounce him destitute of rights, his claims 
are not a w T hit touched by this. He is as much a man as before. 
Not a single gift of God, on which his rights rest, is taken 
away. His relations to the rest of his race are in no measure 
affected. He is as truly their brother as if his tribe had not 
pronounced him a brute. If, indeed, any change takes place, 
his claims are enhanced, on the ground that the suffering 
and injured are entitled to peculiar regard. If any rights 



ii 



should be singularly sacred in our sight, they are those which 
are denied and trodden in the dust. 

It seems to be thought by some, that a man derives all 
his rights from the nation to which he belongs. They are 
gifts of the State, and the State may take them away, if it 
will. A man, it is thought, has claims on other men, not as 
a man, but as an Englishman, an American, or a subject of 
some other State. He must produce his parchment of citizen- 
ship, before he binds other men to protect him, to respect his 
free agency, to leave him the use of his powers according to 
his own will. Local municipal law is thus made the fountain 
and measure of rights. The stranger must tell us where he 
was born, what privileges he enjoyed at home, or no tie links 
us to one another. 

In conformity to these views, it is thought that when one 
community declares a man to be a slave, other communities 
must respect this decree : that the duties of a foreign nation 
to an individual are to be determined by a brand set on him 
on his own shores ; that his relations to the whole race may 
be affected by the local act of a community, no matter how 
small or how unjust. 

This is a terrible doctrine. It strikes a blow at all the 
rights of human nature. It enables the political body to 
which we belong, no matter how wicked or weak, to make 
each of us an outcast from his race. It makes a man nothing 
in himself. As a man, he has no significance. He is sacred 
only as far as some State has taken him under its care. 
Stripped of his nationality, he is at the mercy of all who may 
incline to lay hold on him : he may be seized, imprisoned, 
sent to work in galleys or mines, unless some foreign State 
spreads its shield over him as one of its citizens. 

This doctrine is as false as it is terrible. Man is not the 
mere creature of the State. Man is older than nations, and 
he is to survive nations. There is a law of humanity more 
primitive and divine than the law of the land. He has 
higher claims than those of a citizen : he has rights which 
date before all charters and communities ; not conventional, 
not repealable, but as eternal as the powers and laws of his 
being. 

This annihilation of the individual, by merging him in the 



1 *> 

LA 

State, lies at the foundation of despotism. The nation is too 
often the grave of the man. This is the more monstrous, 
because the very end of the State, of the organization of the 
nation, is to secure the individual in all his rights, and 
especially to secure the rights of the weak. Here is the 
fundamental idea of political association. In an unorganized 
society, with no legislation, no tribunal, no umpire, rights 
have no security. Force predominates over right. This is 
the grand evil of what is called the state of nature. To 
repress this, to give right the ascendency over force, this is 
the grand idea and end of government, of country, of political 
constitutions. And yet we are taught that it depends on the 
law of a man's country, whether he shall have rights, and 
whether other States shall regard him as a man. When cast 
on a foreign shore, his country, and not his humanity, is to 
be inquired into, and the treatment he receives is to be 
proportioned to what he meets at home. 

Men worship power, worship great organizations, and over- 
look the individual ; and few things have depraved the moral 
sentiment of men more, or brought greater woes on the race. 
The State, or the ruler in whom the State is embodied, 
continues to be worshipped, notwithstanding the commission 
of crimes which, would inspire horror in the private man. 
How insignificant are the robberies, murders, piracies, which 
the law makes capital, in comparison with an unjust or 
unnecessary war, dooming thousands, perhaps millions, of the 
innocent to the most torturing forms of death, or with the 
law of an autocrat or of a public body, depriving millions of 
all the rights of men ! But these, because the acts of the 
State, escape the execrations of the world. 

In consequence of this worship of governments, it is thought 
that their relations to one another are alone important. A 
government is too great to look at a stranger, except as he is 
incorporated with some State. It can have nothing to do but 
with political organizations like itself. But the humble 
stranger has a claim on it as sacred as another State. Stand- 
ing alone, he yet has rights, and to violate them is as criminal 
as to violate stipulations with a foreign power. In one view 
it is baser. It is as true of governments as of individuals, 
that it is base and unmanly to trample on the weak. He 



13 



who invades the strong shows a courage which does something 
to redeem his violence; but to tread on the neck of a 
helpless, friendless fellow- creature, is to add meanness to 
wrong. 

If the doctrine be true, that the character impressed on a 
man at home follows him abroad, and that he is to be 
regarded not as a man, but as the local laws which he has 
left regard him, why shall not this apply to the peculiar 
advantages as well as disadvantages which a man enjoys in 
his own land ? Why shall not he, whom the laws invest with 
a right to universal homage at home, receive the same 
tribute abroad ? Why shall not he, whose rank exempts him 
from the ordinary restraints of law on his own shores, claim 
the same lawlessness elsewhere ? Abroad, these distinctions 
avail him nothing. The local law which makes him a kind of 
deity deserts him the moment he takes a step beyond his 
country's borders; and why shall the disadvantages, the 
terrible wrongs, which that law inflicts, follow the poor 
sufferer to the end of the earth ? 

I repeat it, for the truth deserves reiteration, that all 
nations are bound to respect the rights of every human being. 
This is God's law, as old as the world. No local law can 
touch it. No ordinance of a particular State, degrading a 
set of men to chattels, can absolve all nations from the 
obligation of regarding the injured beings as men, or bind 
them to send back the injured to their chains. The character 
of a slave, attached to a man by a local government, is not 
and cannot be incorporated into his nature. It does not 
cling to him, go where he will. The scar of slavery on his 
back does not reach his soul. The arbitrary relation between 
him and his master cannot suspend the primitive indestruc- 
tible relation by which God binds him to his kind. 

The idea that a particular State may fix enduringly this 
stigma on a human being, and can bind the most just and 
generous men to respect it, should be rejected with scorn and 
indignation. It reminds us of those horrible fictions, in 
which some demon is described as stamping an indelible 
mark of hell on his helpless victims. It was the horrible 
peculiarity of the world in the reign of Tiberius, that it had 
become one vast prison. The unhappy man, on whom the 



blighting suspicion of the tyrant had fallen, could find no 
shelter or escape through the whole civilized regions of the 
globe. Every where his sentence followed him like fate. 
And can the law of a despot, or of a chamber of despots, 
extend now the same fearful doom to the ends of the earth ? 
Can a little State at the South spread its web of cruel, 
wrongful legislation over both continents ? Do all commu- 
nities become spell-bound by a law in a single country 
creating slavery? Must they become the slave's jailers? 
Must they be less merciful than the storm which drives off 
the bondman from the detested shore of servitude, and casts 
him on the soil of freedom ? Must even that soil become 
tainted by an ordinance passed perhaps in another hemi- 
sphere ? Has oppression this terrible omnipresence ? Must 
the whole earth register the slaveholder's decree ? Then the 
earth is blighted indeed. Then, as some ancient sects taught, 
it is truly the empire of the Principle of Evil, of the power of 
Darkness. Then God is dethroned here ; for where injustice 
and oppression are omnipotent, God has no empire. 

I have thus stated the great principle on which the English 
authorities acted in the case of the Creole, and on which all 
nations are bound to act. Slavery is the creature of a local 
law, having power not a hand-breadth beyond the jurisdiction 
of the country which ordains it. Other nations know nothing 
of it, are bound to pay it no heed. I might add that other 
nations are bound to tolerate it within the bounds of a 
particular State, only on the grounds on which they suffer a 
particular State to establish bloody superstitions, to use the 
rack in jurisprudence, or to practise other enormities. They 
might much more justifiably put down slavery where it 
exists, than enforce a foreign slave code within their own 
bounds. Such is the impregnable principle which we of the 
free States should recognize and earnestly sustain.* 

This principle our government has not explicitly denied in 
its letter to our minister in London. The letter is chiefly 
employed in dilating on various particular circumstances, 
which it is said entitled the Creole to assistance from the 
British authorities, in the prosecution of the voyage with her 
original freight and passengers. The strength of the docu- 

* Sec Note A. 



IS 



ment lies altogether in the skilful manner in which these 
circumstances are put together. I shall therefore proceed to 
consider them with some minuteness. They are briefly these. 
The vessel was engaged in a voyage " perfectly lawful." She 
was taken to a British port, "not voluntarily by those who 
had the lawful authority over her/' but forcibly and violently 
" against the master's will," without any agency or solicita- 
tion on the part of the great majority of the slaves, and 
indeed solely by the few " mutineers" who had gained 
possession of her by violence and bloodshed. The slaves 
were " still on board" the American vessel. They had not 
become "incorporated with the English population;" and 
from these facts it is argued, that they had not changed their 
original character, that the vessel containing them ought to 
have been regarded as " still on her voyage," and should 
have been aided to resume it according to that law of comity 
and hospitality by which nations are bound to aid one 
another's vessels in distress. 

It is encouraging to see in this reasoning of the letter a 
latent acknowledgment, that, had the vessel been carried 
with the slaves into the British port by the free will of the 
captain, the slaves would have been entitled to liberty. The 
force and crime involved in the transaction, form the strength 
of the case as stated by ourselves. The whole tone of the 
communication undesignedly recognizes important rights in 
a foreign State, in regard to slaves carried voluntarily to their 
shores; and by this concession, it virtually abandons the 
whole ground. 

But let us look at the circumstances which, it is said, 
bound the British authorities to assist the captain in sending 
back the slaves to their chains ; and one general remark im- 
mediately occurs. These circumstances do not touch, in the 
slightest degree, the great principle on which the authorities 
were bound by British and natural law to act. This prin- 
ciple, as we have stated, is, that a nation is bound by the law 
of nature to respect the rights of every human being, that 
every man within its jurisdiction is entitled to its protection 
as long as he obeys its laws, that the private individual may 
appeal to the broad law of humanity, and claim hospitality, 
as truly as a State. 



16 



Now how did the peculiar circumstances of the Creole 
bear on this fundamental view of the case ? Did the manner 
in which the slaves of the Creole were carried to Nassau in 
any measure affect their character as men ? Did they cease 
to be men, because the ship was seized by violence, the 
captain imprisoned, and the vessel turned from its original 
destination ? Did the shifting of the vessel's course by a 
few points of the compass, or did the government of the 
helm by a " mutineer," transmute a hundred or more men 
into chattels ? To the eye of the British officer, the slaves 
looked precisely as they would have done had they been 
brought to the island by any other means. He could see 
nothing but human beings, and no circumstances leaving 
this character on them, could have authorised him to deny 
them human rights. It mattered nothing to him how they 
came to the island ; for this did not touch at all the ground 
of their claim to protection. 

A case indeed is imagined in the document, in which it is 
said that the manner of transportation of slaves to a foreign 
port must determine the character in which they shall be 
viewed. " Suppose an American vessel with slaves lawfully 
on board, were to be captured by a British cruiser, as 
belonging to some belligerent, while the United States 
were at peace ; suppose such prize carried into England, 
and the neutrality of the vessel fully made out in the pro- 
ceedings in Admiralty, and a restoration consequently 
decreed; in such case, must not the slaves be restored 
exactly in the condition in which they were when the cap- 
ture was made ? Would any one contend, that the fact of 
their having been carried into England by force, set them 
free V I reply, undoubtedly they would be free the moment 
they should enter English jurisdiction. A writ of habeas 
corpus could and would and must be granted them, if 
demanded by themselves or their friends, and no court would 
dare to remit them to their chains; and this is not only 
English law, but in the spirit of universal law. In this case, 
however, compensation would undoubtedly be made by the 
captors for the slaves, not on the ground of any claim in the 
slave-holder, but because of the original wrong by the 
captors, and of their consequent obligation to replace the 



L5 



vessel, as mueli as possible, in the condition in which she was 
found, at the moment of being seized on the open ocean, 
where she was captured on groundless suspicion, where she 
had a right to prosecute her voyage without obstruction, 
and whence she ought not to have been brought by the 
capturing State within its jurisdiction, and made subject to 
its laws. 

Let us now consider particularly the circumstances on 
which the United States maintain that the British authori- 
ties were bound to replace the slaves under the master of the 
Creole, and violated their duty in setting them free. 

It is insisted, first, that " the Creole was passing from one 
port to another in a voyage perfectly lawful" We cannot but 
lament that to sustain this point of the lawfulness of the 
voyage, it is affirmed that " slaves are recognized as property 
by the constitution of the United States in those States in 
which slavery exists." Were this true, it is one of those 
truths which respect for our country should prevent our 
intruding on the notice of strangers. A child should throw 
a mantle over the nakedness of his parent. But the lan- 
guage seems to me stronger than the truth. The constitution 
was intended not to interfere with the laws of property in 
the States where slaves had been held. But the recognition 
of a moral right in the slaveholder is most carefully avoided 
in that instrument. Slaves are three times referred to, but 
always as persons, not as property. The free States are 
indeed bound to deliver up fugitive slaves ; but these are to be 
surrendered, not as slaves, but as " persons held to service." 
The clause applies as much to fugitive apprentices from the 
North, as to fugitive slaves from the South. The history of 
this clause is singular. In the first draught of the constitu- 
tion it stood thus : — " No person legally held to service or 
labour in one State, escaping into another, shall in conse- 
quence of any law or regulation thereof, be discharged from 
such service or labour, but shall be delivered up," &c. Mr. 
Madison tells us that the term "legally" was struck out, and 
the words " under the laws thereof," were inserted after the 
word " State," in compliance with the wish of some, " who 
thought the term legal equivocal, and favouring the idea that 

G 



IS 



slavery was Icyal in amoral point of view"* It ought also 
to be added, that in the debate in the convention on that 
clause of the constitution which conferred power on Congress 
to abolish the importation of slaves in 1808, "Mr. Madison 
thought it wrong to admit in the constitution the idea that 
there be property in men."f Most memorable testimony to 
the truth from this greatest constitutional authority ! With the 
knowledge of these facts, our government had no apology for 
holding up the great national charter as recognizing property 
in man. The phraseology and history of the constitution 
afford us some shelter, however insufficient, from the moral 
condemnation of the world : and we should not gratuitously 
cast it away. 

Whilst, however, we censure this clause in the Executive 
Document, we rejoice that on one point it is explicit. It 
affirms that " slaves are recognized as property by the consti- 
tution of the United States, in those States in which slavery 
exists" Here we have the limit precisely defined, within 
which the constitution spreads its shield over slavery. These 
limits are "the States in which slavery exists." Beyond 
these it recognizes no property in man, and of course beyond 
these it cannot take this property under its protection. The 
moment the slave leaves the States within which slavery 
exists, the constitution knows nothing of him as property. 
Of consequence, the national government has no right to 
touch the case of the Creole. As soon as that vessel passed 
beyond the jurisdiction of the State where she received her 
passengers, the slaves ceased to be property in the eye of the 
constitution. The national authorities were no longer bound 
to interfere with and to claim them as such. The nation's 
force was no longer pledged to subject them to their masters. 
Its relation to them had wholly ceased. On this point we 
are bound to adopt the strictest construction of the instrument. 
The free States should not suffer themselves to be carried a 
hair's breadth beyond the line within which they are pledged 
to the dishonourable office of protecting slavery. 

But, leaving this clause, I return to the first consideration 
adduced to substantiate the claim of the Creole to the 



* Madison papers, p. 1589. 



f Ditto, p. 1409. 



19 



assistance of the British authorities. The voyage, we are 
told, was " perfectly lawful." Be it so. But this circumstance, 
according to the principles of the free States, involves no 
obligation of another community to enforce slavery or to 
withhold from the slave the rights of a man. Suppose that 
the Creole had sailed to Massachusetts with her slaves. The 
voyage would have been "lawful;" but on entering the port 
of Boston her slaves would have been pronounced free. The 
"right of property" in them conferred by a slave State would 
have ceased. The lawfulness of the voyage, then, gives the 
slaveholder no claim on another government, into the ports 
of which his slave may be carried. 

Again, what is meant by the " perfect lawfulness" of the 
voyage ? Does it mean that the Creole shipped the slaves 
under the law of nature or the law of Great Britain ? Cer- 
tainly not ; but solely under the law of America ; so that the 
old question recurs, whether a local municipal law, authorizing 
an American vessel to convey slaves, binds all nations to 
whose territory these unhappy persons may be carried, to 
regard them as property, to treat them as the Parias of the 
human race ? This is the simple question, and one not hard 
of solution. 

"The voyage was perfectly lawful," we are told. So would 
be the voyage of a Turkish ship freighted with Christian 
slaves from Constantinople. Suppose such a vessel driven 
by storms or carried by force into a Christian port. Would 
any nation in Europe, or would America, feel itself bound to 
assist the Turkish slaver, to replace the chains on Christian 
captives whom the elements or their own courage had set free, 
to sacrifice to the comity and hospitality and usages of 
nations, the law of humanity and Christian brotherhood ? 

" The voyage," we are told, " was perfectly lawful." Sup- 
pose now that a slaveholding country should pass a law 
ordaining and describing a chain as a badge of bondage, and 
authorizing the owner to carry about his slave fastened to 
himself by this sign of property. Suppose the master to go 
with slave and chain to a foreign country. His journey 
would be "lawful;" but would the foreign government be 
bound to respect this ordinance of the distant State ? Would 
the authorized chain establish property in the slave over the 

c 2 



20 



whole earth ? We know it would not ; and why should the 
authorized vessel impose a more real obligation ? 

It seems to be supposed by some that there is a peculiar 
sacredness in a vessel, which exempts it from all control in 
the ports of other nations. A vessel is sometimes said to be 
" an extension of the territory" to which it belongs. The 
nation, we are told, is present in the vessel; and its honour 
and rights are involved in the treatment which its flag 
receives abroad. These ideas are in the main true in regard 
to ships on the high seas. The sea is the exclusive property 
of no nation. It is subject to none. It is the common and 
equal property of all. No State has jurisdiction over it. No 
State can write its laws on that restless surface. A ship at 
sea carries with her and represents the rights of her country, 
rights equal to those which any other enjoys. The slightest 
application of the laws of another nation to her is to be 
resisted. She is subjected to no law but that of her own 
country, and to the law of nations, which presses equally on 
all States. She may thus be called, with no violence to 
language, an extension of the territory to which she belongs. 
But suppose her to quit the open sea and enter a port. 
What a change is produced in her condition ! At sea she 
sustained the same relations to all nations, those of an equal. 
Now she sustains a new and peculiar relation to the nation 
which she has entered. She passes at once under its jurisdic- 
tion. She is subject to its laws. She is entered by its officers. 
If a criminal flies to her for shelter, he may be pursued and 
apprehended. If her own men violate the laws of the land, 
they may be seized and punished. The nation is not present 
in her. She has left the open highway of the ocean, where 
all nations are equals, and entered a port where one nation 
alone is clothed with authority. What matters it that a 
vessel in the harbour of Nassau is owned in America ? This 
does not change her locality. She has contracted new duties 
and obligations by being placed under a new jurisdiction. 
Her relations differ essentially from those which she sustained 
at home or on the open sea. These remarks apply of course 
to merchant vessels alone. A ship of war is " an extension of 
the territory" to which she belongs, not only when she is on 
the ocean, but in a foreign port. In this respect she 



21 



resembles an army marching by consent through a neutral 
country. Neither ship of war nor army falls under the 
jurisdiction of foreign States. Merchant vessels resemble 
individuals. Both become subject to the laws of the land 
which they enter. 

We are now prepared to consider the next circumstance, an 
which much stress is laid, to substantiate the claim of our 
government. " The vessel was taken to a British port, not 
voluntarily by those who had the lawful authority over her, 
but forcibly and violently, against the master's will, by muti- 
neers and murderers," &c. 

To this, various replies are contained in the preceding 
remarks. The first is, that the local laws of one country are 
not transported to another, and do not become of force there, 
because a vessel of the former is carried by violence into the 
ports of the latter. Another is, that a vessel entering the 
harbour of a foreign State, through mutiny or violence, is not 
on this account exempted from its jurisdiction or laws. She 
may not set its authorities at defiance, because brought within 
its waters against her own will. There may indeed be local 
laws, intended to exclude foreigners, which it would be mani- 
festly unjust and inhuman to enforce on such as may be 
driven to the excluding State against their own consent. 
But as to the laws of a country founded on the universal 
principles of justice and humanity, these are binding on 
foreign vessels, under whatever circumstances they may be 
brought within its jurisdiction. There is still another view 
of this subject, which I have already urged, but which is so 
important, as to deserve repetition. The right of the slaves 
of the Creole to liberation was not at all touched by the 
mode in which they were brought to Nassau. No matter 
how they got there, whether by sea, land, or air, whether by 
help of saint or sinner. A man's right to freedom is derived 
from none of these accidents, but inheres in him as a man, 
and nothing which does not touch his humanity can impair 
it. The slaves of the Creole were not a whit the less men, 
because "mutiny" had changed their course on the ocean. 
They stood up in the port of Nassau with all the attributes 
of men, and the government could not, without wrong, have 
denied their character and corresponding claims. 



22 



W e are now prepared for the consideration of another cir- 
cumstance in the case of the Creole, on which stress is laid. 
We are told by our government that they were " still in the 
ship," when they were declared free, and on this account 
their American character, that is, the character of slavery, 
adhered to them. This is a view of the case, more fitted 
perhaps than any other, to impress the inconsiderate. The 
slaves had not changed their position, had not touched the 
shore ; the vessel was American ; they trod on American 
planks ; they slept within American walls ; they of course 
belonged to America, and were to be viewed only in their 
American character. To this reasoning the principles already 
laid down furnish an easy answer. It is true that the slaves 
were in an American ship : but there is another truth, still 
more pregnant, they were also in another country, where 
American law has no power. The vessel had not carried 
America to the port of Nassau. The slaves had changed 
countries. What though they were there in an American 
ship ? They were therefore not the less within English ter- 
ritory and English jurisdiction. The two or three inches of 
plank, which separated them from the waves, had no mira- 
culous power to prevent them from being where they were. 
The water which embosomed the vessel was English. The 
air they breathed was English. The laws under which they 
had passed were English. One would think from the 
reasoning to which I am replying, that the space occupied by 
a vessel in a foreign port is separated for a time from the 
country to which it formerly belonged ; that it takes the 
character of the vessel, and falls under the laws of the land 
to which she appertains ; that the authorities which have 
controlled it for ages must not enter it, whilst the foreign 
planks are floating in it, to repress crime or enforce justice. 
But this is all a fiction. The slaves, whilst in the ship, were 
in a foreign country, as truly as if they had plunged into the 
waves or set foot on shore. 

We will now consider another circumstance to which im- 
portance is attached in the Document of our Executive. We 
are told that " the slaves could not be regarded as having 
become mixed up or incorporated with the British population, 
or as having changed character at all, either in regard to 



23 



country or personal condition/ 5 To this it is replied, that no 
one pretends that the slaves had become Englishmen, or had 
formed a special relation to Great Britain, on account of 
which she was compelled to liberate them. It was not as a 
part of the British population that they were declared free. 
Had the authorities at Nassau taken this ground, they might 
have been open to the complaints of our government. The 
slaves were pronounced free, not because of any national 
character which they sustained, but because they were men, 
and because Great Britain held itself bound to respect the 
law of nature with regard to men. It was not necessary for 
them to be incorporated with the British population in order 
to acquire the common rights of human beings. One great 
error in the Document is, that a government is supposed to 
owe nothing to a human being who lands on its shores, any 
farther than his nation may require. It is thought to have 
nothing to do, but to inquire into his nationality and to fulfil 
the obligations which this imposes. He has no rights to set 
up, unless his own government stand by him. Thus the fun- 
damental principles of the law of nature are set at nought. 
Thus all rights are resolved into benefactions of the State, 
and man is nothing, unless incorporated, mixed up with the 
population of a particular country. This doctrine is too 
monstrous to be openly avowed, but it lies at the foundation 
of most of the reasonings of the Document. The man, I 
repeat it, is older and more sacred than the citizen. The 
slave of the Creole had no other name to take : his own 
country had declared him not to be a citizen : he had been 
scornfully refused a place among the American people : he 
was only a man j and was that a low title on which to stand 
up among men ? Nature knows no higher on earth. 
English law knows no higher. Shall we find fault with a 
country, because an outcast man landing on its shore is 
declared free without the formality of becoming incorporated 
with its population ? 

The slaves, we are told in the argument which we are con- 
sidering, as they had no claim to be considered as mixed up 
with the British population, had not therefore changed their 
character either in regard to " country or condition/' The 
old sophistry reigns here. It is taken for granted, that a 



man has no character but that of country and condition. In 
other words, he must be regarded by foreign States as be- 
longing to a particular nation, and treated according to this 
view, and no other. Now the truth is, that there is a primi- 
tive, indelible " character" fastened on a man, far more 
important than that of " country or condition and looking 
at this, I joyfully accord with our Cabinet in saying, that the 
slaves of the Creole did not "change their character," by 
touching British soil. There they stood, with the character 
which God impressed on them, and which man can never 
efface. The British authorities gave them no new character, 
but simply recognised that which they had worn from the day 
of their birth, the only one which cannot pass away. 

I have now considered all the circumstances stated in the 
Document as grounds of complaint, with one exception, and 
this I have deferred on account of its uncertainty, and in the 
hope of obtaining more satisfactory information. The cir- 
cumstance is this, " that the slaves were liberated by the 
interference of the colonial authorities," that these " not 
only gave no aid, but did actually interfere to set free the 
slaves, and to enable them to disperse themselves beyond the 
reach of the master of the vessel or their owners." This 
statement is taken from the protest of the captain and crew, 
made at New Orleans, which indeed uses much stronger lan- 
guage, and which charges on the British authorities much 
more exceptionable interference. This, as I have said, is to 
be suspected of exaggeration or unjust colouring, not on the 
ground of any peculiar falseness in the men who signed it, 
but because of the tendency of passion and interest to mis- 
construe the offensive conduct of others. But admitting the 
correctness of the protest, we cannot attach importance to 
the complaint of the Document. This insists that the 
English authorities " interfered to set free the slaves." I 
reply that the authorities did not and could not set the co- 
loured men free, and for the plain reason, that they were in no 
sense slaves in the British port. The authorities found them 
in the first instance both legally and actually free. How then 
could they be liberated ? They stood before the magistrates, 
free at the first moment. They had passed beyond the legis- 
lation of the State which had imposed their chains. They 



2:> 



had come under a jurisdiction which knew nothing of pro- 
perty in man, nothing of the relation of master and slave. 
As soon as they entered the British waters, the legal power 
of the captain over them, whatever it might have been, 
ceased. They were virtually " beyond his reach," even whilst 
on board. Of course, no act of the authorities was needed 
for their liberation. 

But this is not all. The coloured men were not only legally 
free on entering the British port ; they were so actually and 
as a matter of fact. The British authorities had not the 
merit of exerting the least physical power to secure to them 
their right to liberty. The slaves had liberated themselves. 
They had imprisoned the captain. They had taken the com- 
mand of the vessel. The British authorities interfered, to 
liberate, not the coloured people, but the captain; not to 
uphold, but arrest " the mutineers." Their action was 
friendly to the officers and crew. In all this action, however, 
they did nothing of course to reduce the slaves a second time 
to bondage. Had they, in restoring the vessel to the captain, 
replaced directly or indirectly the liberated slaves under the 
yoke, they would have done so at their peril. How then 
could they free those whom they knew only as free ? They 
simply declared them free, declared a matter of fact, which 
could not be gainsaid. If they persuaded them to leave the 
ship, they plainly acted in this as counsellors and friends, 
and exerted no official power. 

It is said indeed, in the protest, that the magistrates 
" commanded" the slaves to go on shore. If this be true, 
and if the command were accompanied with any force, they 
indeed committed a wrong; but one, I fear, for which our 
government will be slow to seek redress. They wronged the 
liberated slaves. These were free, and owed no obedience to 
such a command. They had a right to stay where they were, 
a right to return to America ; and in being compelled to go 
on shore, they received an injury for which our government, 
if so disposed, may make complaint. But the slaves alone 
were the injured party. The right of the owner was not 
violated, for he had no right. His claim was a nullity in the 
British port. He was not known there. The law on which 
he stood in his own country was there a dead letter. Who 



:1G 



can found on it a complaint against the British govern- 
ment ? 

It is said that the " comity of nations" forbade this inter- 
ference. But this comity is a vague unsettled law, and ought 
not to come into competition with the obligations of a State 
to injured men, thrown on its protection, and whose lives and 
liberties are at stake.* "We must wait, however, for farther 
light from Nassau, to comprehend the whole case. It is not 
impossible that the authorities at that port exerted an undue 
influence, and took on themselves an undue responsibility. 
Among the liberated slaves, there were undoubtedly not a 
few so ignorant and helpless, as to be poorly fitted to seek 
their fortune in the West Indies, among strangers little 
disposed to sympathize with their sufferings, or aid their 
inexperience. These ought to have been assured of their 
liberty ; but they should have been left to follow without any 
kind of resistance their shrinking from an unknown shore, 
and their desire to return to the land of their birth, when- 
ever these feelings were expressed. 

I know not that I have overlooked any of the considera- 
tions which are urged in the Executive Document in support 
of our complaints against Great Britain in the case of the 
Creole. I have laboured to understand and meet their full 
force. I am sorry to have been obliged to enter into these 
so minutely, and to repeat what I deem true principles so 
often. But the necessity was laid on me. The Document 
does not lay down explicitly any great principle with which 
our claim must stand or fall. Its strength lies in the skilful 
suggestion of various circumstances which strike the common 
reader, and which must successively be examined, to show 
their insufficiency to the end for which they are adduced. It 
is possible however to give something of a general form to 
the opinions expressed in it, and to detect under these a 
general principle. This I shall proceed to do, as necessary to 
the full comprehension of this paper. The opinions scat- 
tered through the Document may be thus expressed : " Slaves, 
pronounced to be property by American law, and shipped as 
such, ought to be so regarded by a foreign government on 
whose shores they may be thrown. This government is bound 
• See Note B. 



27 



to regard the national stamp set on them. It has no right 
to inquire into the condition of these persons. It cannot 
give to them the character or privileges of the country to 
which they are carried. Suppose a government to have 
declared opium a thing in which no property can lawfully 
exist or be asserted. Would it therefore have a right to take 
the character of property from opium, when driven in a foreign 
ship into its ports, and to cast it into the sea ? Certainly 
not. Neither, because it declares that men cannot be pro- 
perty, can it take this character from slaves, when they are 
driven into its ports from a country which makes them pro- 
perty by its laws. They still belong to the distant claimant ; 
his right must not be questioned or disturbed ; and he must 
be aided in holding them in bondage, if his power over them 
is endangered by distress or mutiny." i Such are the opinions 
of the Document in a condensed form, and they involve one 
great principle, namely this, that property is an arbitrary 
thing, created by governments ; that a government may 
make anything property at its will; and that what its subjects 
or citizens hold as property under this sanction, must be 
regarded as such, without inquiry by the civilized world. 
According to the Document, a nation may attach the cha- 
racter of property to whatever it pleases ; may attach it alike 
to men and women, beef and pork, cotton and rice ; and 
other nations, into whose ports its vessels may pass, are 
bound to respect its laws in these particulars, and in case 
of distress to assist in enforcing them. Let our country, 
through its established government, declare our fathers or 
mothers, sons or daughters, to be property, and they become 
such ; and the right of the master must not be questioned at 
home or abroad. 

Now this doctrine, stated in plain language, needs no 
laboured refutation ; it is disproved by the immediate testi- 
mony of conscience and common sense. Property is not an 
arbitrary thing, dependant wholly on man's will. It has its 
foundation and great laws in nature, and these cannot be 
violated without crime. It is plainly the intention of Provi- 
dence, that certain things should be owned, should be held 
as property. They fulfil their end only by such appropria- 
tion. The material world was plainly made to be subjected 



28 



to human labour, and its products to be moulded by skill to 
human use. He who wins them by honest toil has a right 
to them, and is wronged when others seize and consume 
them. The Document supposes a government to declare, 
that opium is an article in which property cannot exist or be 
asserted, and on this ground, to wrest it from the owner, and 
throw it into the sea; and this it considers as a parallel case 
to the declaration, that property in man cannot exist. But 
who does not see that the parallel is absurd ? The poppy, 
which contains the opium, is by its nature fitted and designed 
to be held as property. The man who rears it by his capital, 
industry, and skill, thus establishes a right to it, and is 
injured if it be torn from him, except in the special case 
where some higher right supersedes that of property. The 
poppy is not wronged by being owned and consumed. It 
has no intelligence, no conscience for its own direction ; no 
destiny to fulfil by the wise use and culture of its powers. It 
has therefore no Rights. By being appropriated to an indi- 
vidual it does good, it suffers no wrong. 

Here are the grounds of property. They are found in the 
nature of the articles so used ; and where these grounds are 
wholly wanting, as in the case of human beings, it cannot 
exist or be asserted. A man was made to be an owner, not 
to be owned ; to acquire, not to become property. He has 
faculties for the government of himself. He has a great 
destiny. He sustains tender and sacred relations, especially 
those of parent and husband, and with the duties aud bless- 
ings of these no one must interfere. As such a being he has 
Rights. These belong to his very nature. They belong to 
every one who partakes it ; all here are equal. He therefore 
may be wronged, and is most grievously wronged, when 
forcibly seized by a fellow-creature, who has no other nature 
and rights than his own, and seized by such an one to live 
for his pleasure, to be bowed to his absolute will, to be placed 
under his lash, to be sold, driven from home, and torn from 
parent, wife, and child, for another's gain. Does any parallel 
exist between such a being and opium ? Can we help seeing 
a distinction between the nature of a plant and a man, which 
forbids their being confounded under the same character of 
property ? Is not the distinction recognized by us in the 



.29 



administration of our laws ? When a man from the South 
brings hither his watch and trunk, is his right to them 
deemed a whit the less sacred, because the laws of his State 
cease to protect them ? Do we not recognise them as his, as 
intuitively and cheerfully as if they belonged to a citizen of 
our own State ? Are they not his, here and everywhere ? 
Do we not feel that he would be wronged, were they torn 
from him ? But when he brings a slave, we do not recognise 
his property in our fellow-creature. We pronounce the 
slave free. Whose reason and conscience do not intuitively 
pronounce this distinction between a man and a watch to be 
just ? 

It may be urged, however, that this is a distinction for 
moralists, not for governments ; that if a government esta- 
blishes property, however unjustly, in human beings, this is 
its own concern, and the concern of no other; and that 
articles on board its vessels must be recognized by other 
nations as what it declares them to be, without any question 
as to the morality or fitness of its measures. One nation, 
we are told, is not to interfere with, another. I need not 
repeat in reply, what I have so often said, that a government 
has solemn duties towards every human being entering its 
ports, duties which no local law about property in another 
country can in any degree impair. I would only say, that a 
government is not bound in all possible cases to respect the 
stamp put by another government on articles transported in 
the vessels of the latter. The comity of nations supposes, 
that in all such transactions respect is paid to common sense 
and common justice. Suppose a government to declare 
cotton to be horses, to write " horse'' on all the bales within 
its limits, and to set these down as horses in its custom-house 
papers ; and suppose a cargo of these to enter a port where 
the importation of cotton is forbidden. Will the comity of 
nations forbid the foreign nation to question the character 
which has been affixed by law to the bale in the country to 
which they belong? Can a law change the nature of things 
in the intercourse of nations ? Must officers be stone blind 
through " comity 1" Would it avail anything to say, that by 
an old domestic institution in the exporting country, cotton 
was pronounced horse, and that such institution must not be 



30 



interfered with by foreigners ? Now in the estimation of 
England and of sound morality, it is as hard to turn man 
into property as horses into cotton, and this estimation Eng- 
land has embodied in its laws. Can we expect such a country 
to reverence the stamp of property on men, because attached 
to them by a foreign land ? 

The Executive Document not only maintains the obligation 
of the English authorities to respect what the South had 
stamped on the slave, but maintains earnestly that w the 
English authorities had no right to inquire into the cargo of 
the vessel, or the condition of persons on board." Now it 
is unnecessary to dispute about this right ; for the B ritish 
authorities did not exercise it, did not need it. The truth 
of the case, and the whole truth, they could not help seeing, 
even had they wished to remain blind. Master, crew, 
passengers, coloured people, declared with one voice that 
the latter were shipped as slaves. Their character was thus 
forced on the government, which of course had no liberty of 
action in the case. By the laws of England, slavery could 
not be recognised within its jurisdiction. No human being 
could be recognised as property. The authorities had but 
one question to ask : Are these poor creatures men ? and to 
solve this question no right of search was needed. It solved 
itself. A single glance settled the point. Of course we 
have no ground to complain of a busy intermeddling with 
cargo and persons, to determine their character by British 
authorities. 

I have thus finished my examination of the Document, 
and shall conclude with some general remarks. And first, 
I cannot but express my sorrow at the tone of Inhumanity 
which pervades it. I have said at the beginning that I 
should make no personal strictures j and I have no thought of 
charging on our Cabinet any singular want of human feeling. 
The Document bears witness not to individual hardness of 
heart, but to the callousness, the cruel insensibility, which 
has seized the community at large. Our contact with slavery 
has seared in a measure almost all hearts. Were there a 
healthy tone of feeling among us, certain passages in this 
Document would call forth a burst of displeasure. For ex- 
ample, what an outrage is offered to humanity, in instituting 



31 



a comparison between man and opium, in treating these as 
having equal rights and equal sanctity, in degrading an im- 
mortal child of God to the level of a drug, in placing both 
equally at the mercy of selfish legislators ! To an unsophis- 
ticated man there is not only inhumanity but irreligion, in 
thus treating a being made in the image of God, and infinitely 
dear to the Universal Father. 

In the same tone, the slaves, who regained their freedom 
by a struggle which cost the life of a white man, and by which 
one of their own number perished, are set down as " muti- 
neers and murderers." Be it granted that their violence is 
condemned by the Christian law : be it granted that the 
assertion of our rights must not be stained with cruelty : that 
it is better for us to die slaves, than to inflict death on our 
oppressor : but is there a man, having a manly spirit, who 
can withhold all sympathy and admiration from men, who 
having grown up under the blighting influence of slavery, 
yet had the courage to put life to hazard for liberty ? Are 
freemen slow to comprehend and honour the impulse, which 
stirs men to break an unjust and degrading chain ? Would 
the laws of any free State pronounce the taking of life in 
such a case " murder ? " Because a man, under coercion, 
whilst on his way to a new yoke, and in the act of being 
carried by force from wife and children and home, sheds 
blood to escape his oppressor, is he to be confounded with 
the vilest criminals ? Does a republic, whose heroic age was 
the Revolution of 1776, and whose illustrious men earned 
their glory in a sanguinary conflict for rights, find no mitiga- 
tion of this bloodshed, in the greater wrongs to which the 
slave is subjected ? This letter would have lost nothing of 
its force, it would at least have shown better taste, had it 
consulted humanity enough to be silent about " opium" and 
" murder." 

I cannot refrain from another view of the Document. 
This declaration of national principles cannot be too much 
lamented and disapproved, for the dishonour it has brought 
on our country. It openly arrays us as a people against the 
cause of human freedom. It throws us in the way of the 
progress of liberal principles through the earth. The grand 
distinction of our Revolution was, that it not only secured 



;3:2 



the independence of a single nation, but asserted the rights 
of mankind. It gave to the spirit of freedom an impulse 
which, notwithstanding the dishonour cast on the cause by 
the excesses of France, is still acting deeply and broadly on 
the civilized world. Since that period, a new consciousness 
of what is due to a human being has been working its way. 
It has penetrated into despotic States. Even in countries 
where the individual has no constitutional means of con- 
trolling government, personal liberty has a sacredness and 
protection never known before. Among the triumphs of this 
spirit of freedom and humanity, one of the most signal is 
the desire to put an end to slavery. The cry for Emancipation 
swells and spreads from land to land. And whence comes 
the opposing cry ? From St. Petersburg ? From Constan- 
tinople ? From the gloomy jealous cabinets of despotism ? 
No ; but from republican America ! from that country whose 
Declaration of Independence was an era in human history ! 
The nations of the earth are beginning to proclaim, that 
slaves shall not breathe their air, that whoever touches their 
soil shall be free. Republican America protests against this 
reverence for right and humanity, and summons the nations 
to enforce her laws against the slave. Oh, my country ! 
hailed once as the asylum of the oppressed, once consecrated 
to liberty, once a name pronounced with tears of joy and 
hope ! now a by-word among the nations, the scorn of the 
very subjects of despotism ! How art thou fallen, morning 
star of freedom ! And has it come to this ? Must thy chil- 
dren blush to pronounce thy name ? Must we cower in the 
presence of the Christian world ? Must we be degraded to 
the lowest place among Christian nations ? Is the sword, 
which wrought out our liberties, to be unsheathed now, to 
enforce the claims of slavery on foreign States ? Can we 
bear this burning shame ? Are the free States prepared to 
incur this infamy and crime ? 

" Slaves cannot breathe in England." I learned this line 
when I was a boy, and in imagination I took flight to the 
soil which could never be tainted by slaves. Through the 
spirit, which spoke in that line, England has decreed that 
slaves cannot breathe in her islands. Ought we not to rejoice 
in this new conquest of humanity? Ought not the tidings 



33 



of it to have been received with beaming eyes and beating 
hearts ? Instead of this, we demand that Humanity shall 
retrace her steps, and Liberty resign her trophies. We call 
on a great nation to abandon its solemnly pronounced convic- 
tion of duty, its solemnly pledged respect for human rights, 
and to do what it believes to be unjust, inhuman, and base. 
Is there nothing of insult in such a demand ? This case is 
no common one. It is not a question of policy, not an 
ordinary diplomatic concern. A whole people, from no 
thought of policy, but planting itself on the ground of justice 
and of Christianity, sweeps slavery from its soil, and declares 
that no slave shall tread there. This profound religious con- 
viction, in which all Christian nations are joining her, we 
come in conflict with, openly and without shame. Is this an 
enviable position for a country which would respect itself or be 
respected by the world ? It is idle, and worse than idle, to 
say, as is sometimes said, that England has no motive but 
policy in her movements about slavery. He who says so, 
talks ignorantly or recklessly. I have studied abolitionism 
in England enough to assure those who have neglected it, 
that it was the act, not of the politician, but of the people. 
In this respect it stands alone in history. It was a disin- 
terested movement of a Christian nation in behalf of 
oppressed strangers, beginning with Christians, carried 
through by Christians. The government resisted it for years. 
The government was compelled to yield to the voice of the 
people. No act of the English nation was ever so national, 
so truly the people's act, as this. And can we hope to 
conquer the conscience as well as the now solemnly adopted 
policy of a great nation ? Were England to concede this 
point, she would prove herself false to known, acknowledged 
truth and duty. Her freshest, proudest laurel would wither. 
The toils and prayers of her Wilberforces, Clarksons, and a 
host of holy men, which now invoke God's blessings on her, 
would be turned to her reproach and shame, and call down 
the vengeance of heaven. 

In bearing this testimony to the spirit of the English people 
in the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery, nothing 
is farther from my mind than a disposition to defend the 
public policy or institutions of that country. In this case, 

D 



u 

as in most others, the people are better than their rulers. 
England is one of the last countries of which I am ready to 
become a partisan. There must be something radically wrong 
in the policy, institutions and spirit of a nation, which all 
other nations regard with jealously and dislike. Great 
Britain, with all her progress in the arts, has not learned 
the art of inspiring confidence and love. She sends forth 
her bounty over the earth, but, politically considered, has 
made the world her foe. Her Chinese war, and her wild 
extension of dominion over vast regions which she cannot 
rule well or retain, give reason to fear that she is falling a 
prey to the disease under which great nations have so often 
perished. 

To a man who looks with sympathy and brotherly regard 
on the mass of the people, who is chiefly interested in the 
" lower classes/' England must present much which is repul- 
sive. Though a monarchy in name, she is an aristocracy in 
fact ; and an aristocratical caste, however adorned by private 
virtue, can hardly help sinking an infinite chasm between 
itself and the multitude of men. A privileged order, pos- 
sessing the chief power of the State, cannot but rule in the 
spirit of an order, cannot respect the mass of the people, 
cannot feel that for them government chiefly exists and ought 
to be administered, and that for them the nobleman holds his 
rank as a trust. The condition of the lower orders at the 
present moment is a mournful commentary on English insti- 
tutions and civilization. The multitude are depressed in 
that country to a degree of ignorance, want and misery, 
which must touch every heart not made of stone. In the 
civilized world there are few sadder spectacles than the 
contrast, now presented in Great Britain, of unbounded 
wealth and luxury with the starvation of thousands and ten 
thousands, crowded into cellars and dens without ventilation 
or light, compared with which the wigwam of the Indian is a 
palace. Misery, famine, brutal degradation, in the neigh- 
bourhood and presence of stately mansions, which ring with 
gaiety and dazzle with pomp and unbounded profusion, 
shock us as no other wretchedness does ; and this is not 
an accidental but an almost necessary effect of the spirit of 
aristocracy and the spirit of trade acting intensely together. 



35 



It is a striking fact, that the private charity of England, 
though almost incredible, makes little impression on this 
mass of misery, thus teaching the rich and titled to be " just 
before being generous/' and not to look to private munifi- 
cence as a remedy for the evils of selfish institutions. 

Notwithstanding my admiration of the course of England 
in reference to slavery, I see as plainly as any the wrongs 
and miseries under which her lower classes groan. I do not 
on this account, however, subscribe to a doctrine very common 
in this country, that the poor Chartists of England are more 
to be pitied than our slaves. Ah, no. Misery is not slavery, 
and, were it greater than it is, would afford the slaveholder 
no warrant for trampling on the rights and the souls of his 
fellow creatures. The Chartist, depressed as he is, is not a 
slave. The blood would rush to his cheek, and the spirit of 
a man swell his emaciated form, at the suggestion of relieving 
his misery by reducing him to bondage ; and this sensibility 
shows the immeasurable distance between him and the slave. 
He has rights and knows them. He pleads his own cause, 
and just and good men plead it for him. According to the 
best testimony, intelligence is spreading among the Chartists; 
so is temperance ; so is self-restraint. They feel themselves 
to be men. Their wives and children do not belong to 
another. They meet together for free discussion, and their 
speeches are not wanting in strong sense and strong expres- 
sion. Not a few among them have seized on the idea of the 
elevation of their class by a new intellectual and moral 
culture, and here is a living seed, the promise of immea- 
surable good. Shall such men, who aspire after a better lot, 
and among whom strong and generous spirits are springing 
up, be confounded with slaves, whose lot admits no change, 
who must not speak of wrongs or think of redress, whom it 
is a crime to teach to read, to whom even the Bible is a 
sealed book, who have no future, no hope on this side death ? 

I have spoken freely of England ; yet I do not forget our 
debt or the debt of the world to her. She was the mother of 
our freedom. She has been the bulwark of protestantism. 
What nation has been more fruitful in great men, in men of 
genius ? What nation can compare with her in munificence ? 
What nation but must now acknowledge her unrivalled 

d 2 



36 



greatness ? That little island sways a wider empire than the 
Roman, and has a power of blessing mankind never before 
conferred on a people. Would to God she could learn, what 
nation never yet learned, so to use power, as to inspire confi- 
dence, not fear, so as to awaken a world's gratitude, not its 
jealousy and revenge ! 

But whatever be the claims of England or of any other 
State, I must cling to my own country with strong preference, 
and cling to it even now, in this dark day, this day of her 
humiliation, when she stands before the world branded, 
beyond the truth, with dishonesty, and, too truly, with the 
crime of resisting the progress of freedom on the earth. 
After all she has her glory. After all, in these free States, a 
man is still a Man. He knows his rights, he respects him- 
self, and acknowledges the equal claim of his brother. We 
have order without the display of force. We have government 
without soldiers, spies, or the constant presence of coercion. 
The rights of thought, of speech, of the press, of conscience, 
of worship, are enjoyed to the full without violence or dan- 
gerous excess. We are even distinguished by kindliness and 
good temper amidst this unbounded freedom. The individual 
is not lost in the mass, but has a consciousness of self- 
subsistence, and stands erect. That character which we call 
Manliness, is stamped on the multitude here as nowhere else. 
No aristocracy interferes with the natural relations of men to 
one another. No hierarchy weighs down the intellect, and 
makes the church a prison to the soul from which it ought to 
break every chain. I make no boast of my country's pro- 
gress, marvellous as it has been. I feel deeply her defects. 
But in the language of Cowper, I can say to her, 

" Yet being free I love thee ; for the sake 
Of that one feature can be well content, 
Disgraced as thou bast been, poor as thou art, 
To seek no sublunary rest beside." 

Our country is free ; this is its glory. How deeply to be 
lamented is it, that this glory is obscured by the presence of 
slavery in any part of our territory. The distant foreigner, 
to whom America is a point, and who communicates the 
taint of a part to the whole, hears with derision our boast of 



37 



liberty, and points with a sneer to our ministers in London, 
not ashamed to plead the rights of slavery before the civi- 
lized world. He ought to learn, that America, which shrinks 
in his mind into a narrow unity, is a league of sovereignties, 
stretching from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Mexico, 
and destined, unless disunited, to spread from ocean to 
ocean ; that a great majority of its citizens hold no slaves ; 
that a vast proportion of its wealth, commerce, manufac- 
tures and arts, belongs to the wide region not blighted by 
this evil; that we of the free States cannot touch slavery, 
where it exists, with one of our fingers ; that it exists without 
and against our will ; and that our necessity is not our choice 
and crime.* Still the cloud hangs over us as a people, the 
only dark and menacing cloud. Can it not be dispersed ? 
Will not the South, so alive to honour, so ardent and fearless, 
and containing so many elements of greatness, resolve on the 
destruction of what does not profit and cannot but degrade 
it ? Must slavery still continue to exist, a firebrand at home 
and our shame abroad ? Can we of the free States brook, 
that it should be thrust perpetually by our diplomacy on the 
notice of a reproving world ? that it should become our dis- 
tinction among the nations ? that it should place us behind 
all ? Can we endure, that it should control our public coun- 
sels, that it should threaten war, should threaten to assert its 
claims in the thunder of our artillery ? Can we endure that 
our peace should be broken, our country exposed to invasion, 
our cities stormed, our fields ravaged, our prosperity withered, 
our progress arrested, our sons slain, our homes turned into 
deserts, not for rights, not for liberty, not for a cause which 
humanity smiles on and God will bless, but to rivet chains 
on fellow creatures, to extend the law of slavery throughout 
the earth ? These are great questions for the free States. I 
must defer the answer of them to another time. The duties 
of the free States in relation to slavery deserve the most 
serious regard. Let us implore Him who was the God of 
our fathers, and who has shielded us in so many perils, to 
open our minds and hearts to what is true and just and good, 
to continue our union at home and our peace abroad, and to 

* See Note C. 



38 



make our country a living witness to the blessings of free- 
dom, of Reverence for Right on our own shores and in our 
intercourse with all nations. 



NOTE S. 



A. 

To the preceding remarks it is in vain to oppose the M comity of nations.' 
England in her public acts having pronounced slavery unjust, pronounces 
also, that "comity" cannot prevail against justice. And is not this right 
and true? Can a nation be bound by comity to recognise within its 
borders, and to carry into effect, by its judicial or executive machinery, 
the laws of another country, which it holds to be violations of the law of 
nature or of God? Would not our own courts indignantly refuse to 
enforce a contract or relation between foreigners here, which, however 
valid in their own land where it was made, was contrary to our own insti- 
tutions, or to the acknowledged precepts of morality and religion ? 



B. 

" It is said, that this alleged interference by the British authorities was 
contrary to the comity of nations, and that therefore the British govern- 
ment is bound to indemnify the owners of the slaves. But indemnity for 
what? for their asserted property in these men? But that government 
does not recognise property in men. Suppose the slaves were dispersed by 
reason of its interference ; yet the master and owners received no damage 
thereby, for they had no title to the slaves. Their property had ceased, 
when these men came under the benign influence of English law." 



C. 

I have spoken of the great majority in our country who hav'e no parti- 
cipation whatever in slavery. Indeed it is little suspected at home, any 
more than abroad, how small is the number of slaveholders here. I learn 
from a judicious correspondent at the South, that the slaveholders in that 
region cannot be rated at more than three hundred thousand. Some make 



40 



them less. Supposing each of them to be the head of a family, and each 
family to consist of five members ; then there will be one million five hun- 
dred thousand having a direct interest in slaves as property. This is about 
one-eleventh of the population of the United States. The three hundred 
thousand actual slaveholders are about a fifty-sixth part of our whole popu- 
lation. These govern the South entirely, by acting in concert, and by the 
confinement of the best education to their ranks ; and, still more, to a 
considerable extent, they have governed the whole country. Their cry 
rises above all other sounds in the land. Few as they are, their voices 
well nigh drown the quiet reasonings and remonstrances of the North in 
the House of Representatives. 



13 



